Lee Sedol Finally Beats Google’s AI In One Go Match

By Adnan Farooqui, on 03/13/2016 09:52 PDT

If you’ve not been following tech news recently, you might not have heard about a rather interesting five-game series taking place between Google DeepMind’s artificial intelligence called AlphaGo and Lee Sedol, the world champion of Go. The two are competing for the $1 million prize and while AlphaGo AI has already clinched the series by winning three straight matches against the human, Sedol has finally beaten the machine in the fourth match.

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AlphaGo has won three straight games against Sedol and has thus won the five-game series however Sedol clawed back some dignity for mankind by defeating the machine in the fourth game.

Sedol was received with thunderous applause when he entered the post-game conference, “I’ve never been congratulated so much just because I won one game!” he remarked, adding that the win felt more valuable after losing the first three games straight.

The matches are taking place in Seoul, South Korea. Sedol would have been hoping to walk away with the $1 million prize money but that’s not going to happen for him. Since AlphaGo is a machine it can’t really spend that $1 million prize money so Google will be donating that amount to charity instead.